If you are spending money on advertising, and you don’t think you are getting your money’s worth, maybe it’s because your advertising is too conventional. Maybe, you think that your ads, should be like your competitors ads, only better.
Then you see what a young criminal defense lawyer did with his advertising and you start to understand that being like your competition just means you’re a commodity.
Daniel Buckley Muessig is a defense attorney from Pittsburgh, PA and yet he’s so much more. He recently uploaded an ad for his business, you know, like most lawyers might. But in less than 24 hours, the ad has gone super viral.
Why? Because if you’ve committed a murder or an arson or “even funny throwback crimes such as moonshining” and you live in Pennsylvania, he wants to be your lawyer.
“I may have a law degree,” he says, “but I think like a criminal.”The otherwise plainspoken 32-year-old Pittsburgh native and graduate of The University of Pittsburgh School of Law was formerly a battle rapper by the name of Dos-Noun. As Dos-Noun, he performed with the likes of indie rap heavyweights such as Slug, Atmosphere, before making the successful jump to a career as a criminal attorney a few years ago.
After uploading the video at 11pm Wednesday night, he’s been seeing his phone ring off the hook ever since.
The folks at Crispin Porter + Bogusky used to evaluate if an ad was just an ad- or something special- “how would this work as a press release?” If it isn’t press worthy- it’s almost not worth doing. CP+B launched a body spray for Burger King- called “Flame”. Do you really want to smell like a Whopper? Nope. But, every news outlet wrote about it.
Here is the raw footage of Mr. Muessig being interviewed by the local news- about his “unconventional” ad- which is also 7 times longer than the normal lawyer TV ad:
This was cut down to a 2.75 minute news segment.
Remember, Muessig didn’t spend a dime on media, he paid some professionals to create the ad- and posted it on Youtube.
We always remind clients, we can create interest, but it’s still up to the client to close the deal and follow up. The old adage that nothing kills a crappy product faster than great advertising still holds true.
If Mr. Muessig’s phone really did ring off the hook, he may never need to do another ad, since this ad will always be relevant. No sale, no call before midnight tonight (in fact, he’s ok with you calling him after midnight). People who don’t think it’s professional (other lawyers) or that he doesn’t looks “lawyerly enough” aren’t his target audience. He says he thinks like a criminal in the ad, and since thinking like your clients is one of the fundamental keys to good advertising he’s nailing his advertising since his customers are criminals.
Learn from the X-rapper lawyer. Don’t do ads that aren’t worthy of press coverage or watching twice.
Update- Mar 8 2022- apparently, not only did Daniel Muessig think like a criminal- turned out he was one.
A former defense attorney who became known for his satirical ads offering his ability to “think like a criminal” will spend five years in prison for his role in a large-scale marijuana ring.
Daniel Muessig, 40, of Squirrel Hill, was sentenced Tuesday by Senior U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab to the mandatory prison sentence allowed.
He pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to distribute marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana.
There are a lot of choices these days in picking an ad agency. Back in the pre-Macintosh days, an agency had to have a whole lot of moving parts to make it work. Sure, you could present your ideas on a napkin, over the three martini lunch back then, but, the process of crafting an actual ad required keyliners, typesetters, color separators- shooting a commercial often involved film, lights, sound studios. Now you can shoot a commercial on your cell phone, edit it there, upload it and run it. An Instagram post can be billed as an ad. The lure of the one-person agency, jack of all trades, digital magician is great. You could even have that person on staff! It could be your kid- at least if your company is privately held and your gross revenues are less than 5-10 million a year (and you’re ok with them staying there).
Real offices, a listing in the Yellow Pages, membership in the “Four A’s” were considered credibility builders when The Next Wave was founded. Now, we produce a more up to date directory of ad agencies in Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati than you can find anywhere else, including the dreadful “Book of Lists” published by the Business Journal network. We update it almost weekly. We leave the agencies that come and go- so people can find the wreckage (especially of the imaginary agencies that seem to pop up like flies- mostly, the one person, between jobs type, who thinks they are the next David Ogilvy- until they realize that doing the invite for their sisters wedding didn’t really impress anyone except the AAF Addy awards judges last year).
We do a lot of competitive analysis. You know like JC Penney follows what Kohl’s and Target do (or tries to at least). We look at these imaginary agencies and try to figure out who really is the next wave in advertising- and most of the time, we just shake our heads and hope no one gets hurt.
The first clue is almost always a focus on vision and mission statements. It will be prominently displayed front and center. I remember going to a Cincinnati Ad Club meeting where the presenter, a former new business guru for the Martin Agency, spent an hour comparing these pompous, long, statements of bullshit- and showcasing the similarities.
Here’s two (and we’re not citing them- to protect the guilty):
“The most effective branding goes deeper than just designing the active components of a marketing campaign; it requires building a relationship. Clients look to us for creative branding solutions because we don’t just design campaigns, we create engagement opportunities that build lifelong customers.”
and:
What we do
Agency X™ (yes, trademarked- ooh.) is a think tank; a collection of brilliant minds, inspired souls, and sizzling creativity.
In this chaotic world of relentless change, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and insight for a brand to clearly articulate a meaningful message through all the noise and confusion of a global marketplace. As seasoned branding consultants, we believe the answer is to create a rigorous learning organization. An organization of life-long students fascinated by business, strategy, design, and branding… students fascinated by life.
From Fortune 500 companies to the frenzy of dot-com startups, we have the invaluable experience of working with and for some of the world’s most recognized and respected brands. In the some of the world’s most recognized and respected branding agencies. In the wake of this unfortunate economic apocalypse, we were… well, inspired, to take our collective experience, all our hopes and dreams, and begin our own branding company.
And you know what? We’re having the time of our lives!
It’s a collection of sizzle alright, on the personnel page, only the founder, an adjunct college instructor, bothered to update his LinkedIn account as actually working there. He includes people who still work at other places, including an “SEO expert” (who shares his last name and is probably his daughter) who is a bank teller, and even his wife- listed as a “Creative Director” is listed in Linkedin as working somewhere else. Just because Don Draper fabricated his backstory back in the make-believe version of Madison Avenue in the sixties, it’s a little harder to do it now.
It’s always been a problem to tell what was really done in an ad agency by the current staff at the current agency. So many startups are showing work that they did at other agencies, with other senior people handling the clients, the strategy, the concept. Sure, you “wrote the ad” but, the real question is who wrote the brief, who sold the client the strategy, and did it work?
Agencies are supposed to grow your business, improve the bottom line, help guide your strategic direction. “Sizzling creativity” is wonderful, but if it’s fueled by burning your budget on the wrong things, your life expectancy will decrease to the length of time that this agency will be around- usually until the next job offer with a steady pay check comes along.
We’ve watched the horrific impact of bad advertising advice, like the local salmon smokers who spent a ton of money on a very tame branding package, and advice to spend their Saturdays trying to peddle their lox at the local farmers market, instead of working to find distribution channels for super premium seafood, carefully smoked to perfection. Or even a client of ours, who was ready to sell his business the morning it was set to open, because he had hired his marketing consultant after signing a ridiculous lease at a local shopping mall, instead of finding a low rent private location and investing his money in advertising his new product (what worked for Asda, WalMart in the UK, isn’t the model for a small startup here).
We’re working on updating our site, because, well, we keep doing new things, have new stories to tell and the way we approach advertising now is different than we did 5 years ago, or even three. Of course, the first thing we do is study our competition- just like we do for our clients. We try to find the sweet spot, the positioning that clearly makes us different. As to new mission statements, or taglines- nope, we don’t need to change them, update them, add more to them, because after 25 years in the business, we’re still The Next Wave and we still know what’s really important and can say it succinctly.
We Create Lust • Evoke Trust. And our job is to make you more money than you pay us. And, no, we don’t have to meet you in a coffee shop- we have a real office that people come to everyday- even without appointments. It has our tools of our trade- computers, printers, video and photo gear, and most importantly, our library. Come visit.
“Hey Whipple, Squeeze This” should be required reading for everyone in advertising. We make everyone at The Next Wave read it. Of course, the fact that our Chief Creative Officer helped review and contribute to the chapter on digital in the 5th edition means it’s going to be on the reading list.
Luke Sullivan is one of superstars of Advertising who has won virtually every award there is in advertising. He now teaches at the prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) after working at agencies like Fallon (Where he mentored another one of our favorite people and former client Sally Hogshead), Martin, GSD&M. He’s featured in the book “The Copy Book”How 32 of the World’s Best Advertising Writers Write Their Advertising. He travels the world, getting paid big bucks to speak about how great advertising is done.
And, yes, we’re his go to guys when it comes to building a WordPress theme, organizing his content for optimal organic search, and teaching him how to do this Internet thing right (the professor is getting a C+ so far).
Yes, WordPress is powering about 25% of the world wide web these days, but, not everybody truly understands how to make it work for you. We’ve been teaching our www.websitetology.com seminar since Nov 3 2005 (we know because we have slides in the prezo still that were screen shots from the night before). It’s not enough to just have content online- it’s how you put it up, organize it, tag it, and make it useful to readers and therefore to Google. Websites also aren’t brochures, which is hard for some old school ad guys to wrap their heads around.
If you build your site correctly, it becomes a corporate information dashboard- where you can find out exactly what people are saying about you, how they found you, what they expect of you and even, why you are better than your competition.
If you are interested in how we do it, first read the book “Hey Whipple” then call us, the guys Hey Whipple used to craft his site.
